Along with the recent development of information and communication technology, various wireless communication technologies have been developed. Among them, Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN) enables wireless access to the Internet based on radio frequency technology through a portable terminal such as a Personal Digital Assistant (PDA), a laptop computer, a Portable Multimedia Player (PMP) in a home, an office, or a specific service providing area.
The introduction of Wi-Fi Direct or Wi-Fi Peer-to-Peer (Wi-Fi P2P) is under discussion, as a direct communication technology that facilitates interconnection between devices without a wireless Access Point (AP) which is a basic requirement for a legacy WLAN system. According to Wi-Fi Direct, devices can be connected to each other without a complex establishment procedure and an operation for exchanging data at a communication rate offered by a general WLAN system can be supported to provide various services to users.
Recently, various Wi-Fi-enabled devices have been used. Among them, the number of Wi-Fi Direct-enabled devices which are Wi-Fi devices capable of communicating with each other without an AP is increasing. The Wi-Fi Alliance (WFA) has been discussing the introduction of a platform supporting various services (e.g., Send, Play, Display, Print, etc.) using a Wi-Fi Direct link. This may be referred to as Wi-Fi Direct Service (WFDS). According to WFDS, applications, services, etc. can be controlled or managed by a service platform called Application Service Platform (ASP).